Sin City - 2005

Robert Rodriguez seems to have sensed something when he pondered making a movie out of Frank Miller's noir graphic novel Sin City. His instincts here seem so spot on its hard for me to imagine he simply took the job 'cause he liked the book. I have to believe it runs deeper than that. The finished product is so seamless and confidently executed that he must have known exactly why he wanted to make this movie. Perhaps what he sensed was a chance to reinvent film noir in a way that could introduce this old form to a new, 21st century audience. If that was his goal he succeeded spectacularly. To say that this is the best comic book to movie adaptation I've ever seen would be an understatement. There isn't anything else even close, though Tim Burton's "Batman" might at least be in the same discussion.

Rodriguez has not attempted to recreate the panels of the graphic novel on screen, instead he's distilled their noir essence and re-imagined them using the larger more expansive medium. In the process he's put green screen/CGI to the most effective use I've seen to date at the movies. Painting with these tools, not trying to create photo-realistic effects with them. This leaves room for something comic books are great at leaving room for but movies have pushed to the curb: your imagination.

The story begins with Detective Hartigan (Bruce Willis) on his way into retirement. Before he moves on into that long night though he has one last case to wrap up. A young girl named Nancy has been kidnapped by the demented son of a US Senator and he needs to save her before she disappears into the lecher's hell like so many before her. His quest will cover many years, stretch his sense of duty to the limit and finally require him to do the unthinkable in order to guarantee Nancy's long term survival.

Once Hartigan's story is set up we fast forward to what passes for the present day in this world and pick up the tale of Marv, a local thug who's been inhabiting his life of late like a bad dream he can't wake from. When he's set up for the murder of the one woman who wasn't afraid to show him her vulnerable side, he finds purpose for his life: vengance. Mickey Rourke's performance is a wonder to behold as he somehow manages to humanize this walking caricature, creating in the process an urban anti-hero for the ages.

Next we meet Dwight (Clive Owen) who has returned to Sin City after extensive plastic surgery meant to hide him from the police who want him for some unexplained murder from an earlier day. Dwight can change his face but he can't change who he is and as a result he allows himself to get caught between a barmaid who he's sweet on and her abusive boyfriend. His unfortunate proclivity for doing the right thing will result in lots of blood being spilled.

This is not a movie for sensitive types. There is stylized blood shed by the gallon, beheadings, torture, nudity, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, castration and lots more. Curiously though, as down and gritty as the proceedings are, there's nary a common profanity anywhere to be heard. These characters don't need them. They live profane lives.

The ensemble cast is rounded out by the sumptuous Carla Gugino, the beautiful Jamie King (pulling double duty as a pair of twin sisters), the (possibly miscast) Jessica Alba (who seems to think stripping is a fairly modest profession), Michael Madsen as a corrupt cop, Elijah Wood as a serial killing cannibal (!), Rutger Hauer as the cannibal's protector, Benecio Del Toro as yet another corrupt cop, Rosario Dawson as the unofficial queen of Old Town and Brittany Murphy in her last substantive role.

Yet as impressive as the cast is it's never a distraction; testament to the abilities of the the actor's involved as well as the fact that the story - being from a kind of parallel universe and buttressed by the constant visual splendor - demands you pay attention even if it is, at its core, standard noir fare. Rodriguez also deserves much credit for successfully managing what might have turned into an ego-overload situation in the hands of a less confident director.

Sin City is so good, so unique in its treatment of the movie screen that it may turn out to be a one-off. Any attempts to emulate it will look like just that. It will require a creative director indeed to take what Rodriguez has done here and use it as a point of departure for something newer still. In the meantime though we have Sin City: dark, enigmatic, terribly beautiful, evocative and ground breaking. I don't know what else a person can ask of a film.

King Kong - 2005

Peter Jackson has (for me) always been suspect as a maker of major motion pictures. Does he have admirable drive? Sure. Does he know how to crack the whip and keep things moving? Sure. Can he be trusted to not run off with the studio's $200 million? Sure. But there's more to making quality entertainment than being able to muster the troops and guard the bank. You have to care about the viewer as well. And Jackson, frat boy that he is at heart, can never quite bring himself to remember that. (His complete disregard for continuity nearly destroyed The Lord of the Rings.)

With that said, and given that I'm always wary of remakes anyway, it's fair to say I approached Mr. Jackson's $200 million version of King Kong with a healthy dose of skepticism. Was this a film that needed to be made? Really? Why? What could Peter Jackson say with a remake of Merian C. Cooper's classic 1933 film that hadn't been said just fine in the original? Would Jackson abandon his contempt for the audience and pay attention to the details this time? (LOTR had a lot of juicy detail to be sure, but those details were embedded in areas where his control was secondary: set design, costume design etc. The areas he had complete control over - direction and editing - were full of examples of a director who thinks "They'll never notice anyway.")

It didn't take long for me to have my answers. The first thing that jumped out at me right away were the horrible casting decisions. Adrian Brody is the worst choice for a male love interest since, well, since nobody. He's the worst. Andy Serkis proves once again that when you take all those cute little locator balls off of him and stick him in front of the camera to actually act he is simply not up to it. I can only assume he gets work with Jackson because he shares Jackson's frat boy mentality and that, because of this, Jackson finds his presence comforting. Either that or he has some photos that Jackson doesn't want to see the light of day.

And then there's Jack Black. Ah Jack Black... What can one say about Mr. Black's performance here? Off-hand, undisciplined and distracting are words that spring to mind but maybe the most appropriate word is, "inappropriate". The comic relief should not be the central character (and by sheer force of personality Black makes himself the central human character whether Jackson and Co intended him to be or not). While his part wasn't written to be comic relief Black doesn't really know any other way to play things, and normally that's fine because he's a comedic actor and as such he's among the best there is. But here it simply doesn't work as he spends three hours with his tongue barely concealed within his cheek.

The other reason this Dodo doesn't fly is the length. Jackson, its seems, has had one too many conversations with James Cameron and the latter has obviously told him "Pete don't let anybody tell you that anything you shot shouldn't go in the film. I say if you shot it, use it." and Jackson has taken his advice to heart. (For the record I'm of the opinion that Cameron's "Aliens" - the theatrical release - is the best movie ever made. But it was made before he had the clout to demand final cut and all of his subsequent films have suffered from his inability to edit himself.)

One way they could have shortened the film (and made it immeasurably better in the process) would have been to remove the entire 'spider pit' scene. This scene is more evidence of Jackson's frat boy mentality; at least I hope it is. Because if it isn't it means that Jackson simply doesn't know the definition of the word "gross" or understand that "gross" should never be a word you want attached to your wanna be blockbuster. I'd register a guess that this scene is the single biggest reason the film stalled at the box office.

"Did you see King Kong last night?"
"Yeah."
"Well?"
"It was okay, except there was this really gross scene..."

Hey, that's the kind of word of mouth that'll have the ladies scrambling for tickets! I remember being in the theater and watching nearly half the crowd turn away and many of them go "Ewwwwwwww". A few even walked out. I'm sure if someone pressed Jackson on why he felt it necessary to include this huge gross-out in the middle of his love story he'd say something about artistic integrity. BS. The integrity of a work of art depends largely on how the piece (regardless of medium) works as a whole and this scene undermines everything else about King Kong. The movie, already on the shaky ground established by questionable casting decisions and the nagging feeling that it lacks justification, never really recovers from it.

And what about that justification? Well, the rest of the movie doesn't add anything to the essential narrative laid down in 1933. It doesn't illuminate any hidden streams of meaning that eluded me when I watched the original. In short, it's not a contemporary updating of a classic, it's just a re-filming of a classic using modern techniques. The only things that are different are that in this filming the relationship between the beauty and the beast is a two-way one (a twist introduced in the Dino DeLaurentis 1976 version), and Jackson includes the spider pit scene which Cooper had the good sense to leave on the cutting room floor.

King Kong then is one of the great follies of modern cinema. A vanity project done by exactly the type of person you don't want doing a vanity project: a vain person. Should you ever be tempted to pony up money for the DVD, don't. Buy the original instead and enjoy some first rate movie making.